The Top 4 Questions Authors Should Ask When Planning A Book Launch

This is episode seven of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's tough time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share about planning a book launch. My name is Shelli Hitz and recently I finished the print version of my book Procrastination to Publication. The first five episodes of my podcast were all about the content in that book. But if you prefer a print book, you know something to hold in your hands, you can check it out. It's on Amazon.com however, the primary reason I had that book printed in print format was for marketing reasons to have a business card people won't throw away. However, most of the time when I publish a new book, I have a plan because I want to do a specific book launch. And in this episode I'm going to share more with you about what that may entail and some questions that you should ask.

I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. However, once you publish your book if no one knows about.

Won'T have any impact. If you're standing in front of an empty auditorium, your message isn't going to impact anyone. So I want you to reach as many people as you can with your book and part of that is having a success successful book launch. So the question is, are you ready to shine? It's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight Training. This is where I share training and strategies to help you grow your business or ministry through writing and publishing books, marketing online, and creating products and services to sell on the back end. I'm not just about the books, but so much more. I'm here to connect with you, with your audience in the best way possible. Today's podcast is episode seven titled the Top four Questions Authors Should Ask When Planning a Book Launch. I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your message to more people, so be prepared to shine. The first question you should ask when planning a book launch is what is my primary goal? I have so many authors that ask me what should I do for my book launch? How should I plan my book launch? What should I include? What should I do? And I asked them. The first question I asked them is what is your primary goal? Because there's always many goals and you could say, I want to reach all of these goals. I want to reach bestseller status and be able to put in my bio that I'm a best selling author. I want to have book sales show me the money.

And I want to grow my email list. I want to grow my business through my book. And you may say, shelley, I want all those goals. However, I want you to tell me what is the one primary goal for your book launch? Because if you're trying to do everything, sometimes you'll never reach anything with your goals. However, if your goal is bestseller status, there's a very specific way you can achieve that. If your goal is book sales, you're probably going to have to do a lot of work to really make sure that you, you know, you make back your return on investment of time and your return on investment in your book to make sure you are getting your goal. If your goal is to grow your email list, then there's specific strategies that you could consider. So right now, if you're able, if you're not driving, or if you're not somewhere where you're unable to write something down. But I want you to write down for your upcoming book launch, if you have a book launch coming up, what is your primary goal? Is it best seller status, is it book sales? Or is it growing your email list? Or maybe it's something else. Write that down right now so that you can know what your goal is. The second question I believe authors should ask when planning a book launch is, how far in advance do I need to plan? Because sometimes you get in the moment and you think, okay, I'm ready to go, I'm publishing my book, let's do this. And if you're following my proven system in authoraudienceacademy.com, you may be publishing quality books fast. And so you may not be thinking.

Far ahead in advance enough to really plan for your book launch. So I want you to think, for most book launches, you need to start thinking about it and start planning at least six weeks in advance. This gives you time to write out your social media posts, to write out sample emails or your emails emails you'll send to your list to plan a blog tour or whatever you're going to do next week. And next week's episode, we're going to talk about seven different book launch events you can plan. So definitely don't miss that episode. But if you're planning a really big, big launch, you may need up to six months in advance for all the details. It can be really Detailed and however, you know, sometimes you just go with the flow. For example, in 2012, I published a book, 21 Days of Gratitude Challenge. It's now called the Gratitude Journal. When I was getting ready to release that book, to be honest, I didn't even plan on publishing it. It was just a personal journal, a personal challenge I felt like God asked me to go through, and then I ended up publishing it. And so sometimes you may have a book like that. And last minute, I felt like God gave me an idea to do a group promotion for a free day. And so I. I just organized it last minute, one week in advance. I mean, I only had one week to plan this launch. It was one of the most successful launches I've ever done. And I just really, truly believe it's because God blessed it. So sometimes you don't need months and months and months of planning, but just know in advance, like these are some questions to ask yourself and say, okay, how far in advance do I need to plan? Because if you're getting ready to launch a book, you're getting ready to publish a book, you may need to start doing some planning for your launch as you're finishing the publishing process. Question number three is, how can I make my first 30 days count? Did you guys know that there is something called hot new releases on Amazon? Yes, there's a specific list on Amazon and I will include the link to it in the show notes. However, you can also just Google hot new releases on Kindle or on Amazon and you'll find it there as well. But there's a specific list and your book is eligible for that list the first 30 days. So you want to be able to build momentum and you want to be able to get up on that list and get as high as possible on that list. So if you publish your book and then you don't have a launch until 45 days later, you've pretty much missed that window of opportunity. So this is something to really be aware of when you're launching a book, that those first 30 days are really crucial and you want to give them a reason to buy now. So in those first 30 days in your book launch, give them a reason. So you might want to lower your price for a certain period of time. Maybe it's two or three days, maybe it's a week, maybe you will offer bonuses for those who buy during your launch. And I'll go into more detail, into some ideas next week, on next week's episode. But that's something else to consider. You know, get creative and give them a reason to buy during those first 30 days so you can get up on that hot new releases list, get more exposure and potentially get more momentum on Amazon and have Amazon be promoting for you. The fourth question authors should ask when planning a book launch is do I want to have my book for sale with pre orders? I have not done this very often, but I'm considering doing this for my upcoming book, Broken Crayons Still Color, because I've already talked a lot about the book. I have a guest blog post that I'm not sure if it's going to be accepted, but if it is, it talks about that book. And so I'm just thinking I'd like to have the book out there and up and available for pre order. And so there's a couple different ways to do it. And this is something just to consider and to ask. When you're planning your book launch on kdp, you now have the opportunity to pre order, set up your book for pre order up to 90 days in advance. I did ask KDP's support and they said you can change your date one time, however you can only change it once. So let's say you, you set your date for 90 days in advance, but you get your book done earlier. I was thinking about that, you know, what if I got my book done earlier than that 90 days? Well, then you can move it up once, but you can only change it once. Then you need to upload your file at least 10 days in advance. So you need to really plan into that, make sure you leave cushion. And you know, I asked them do the sales count towards bestseller status the day your book launches? And they told me, yes, it does. Now I've heard conflicting things on this, but I asked KDP support directly and they said the pre order sales do count for your bestseller status the day it releases. So those are just a few little things about kdp. Now, if you would want to put a print book for pre sale, there are two ways you could do that. You could do it on your own website. You set up a sales page, take orders via your payment processor and let your customers know when the orders will be shipped. And it's a really cool way to do it to build buzz. And you can easily do that. I've seen several of my colleagues do that. You can also do it through Amazon Advantage. So that's for sale on Amazon both in Kindle and print versions. And this is an option that my colleague Eric Vanderhoek talks about a lot and he gives a step by step tutorial on how to do this. It's with print books and you actually fulfill the orders or your publisher can fulfill those orders, but as a self published author we usually fulfill those orders and Eric actually gives the step by step instructions on how to do this in the book Indie Author's Guide to Book Marketing Success. But I've given you this excerpt as a PDF for free as an opt in for for this episode. So you can download this and get the step by step instructions simply by signing up@authoraudience.com 7 There's a place to sign up for that and that way you can get all of those step by step instructions. It's just too much to include in this podcast. The pros of doing a print pre order is that you can sell autographed copies and include other marketing materials in your books. You can also earn more royalties because if you're ordering your books directly from CreateSpace or IngramSpark instead of them being sold through Amazon, you will earn more royalties that way. So if your goal is to really earn more income from your book launch, that may be an option. Now the cons of course is that you have to do the work of the shipping and handling. It's pretty annoying. I mean you have to do all of the labels, you have to figure it out, you have to have, you know, you have to just do all of the administrative stuff and your sales don't count towards your best seller rank on Amazon, so it's not going to boost your bestseller rank on Amazon. And so that's something to consider as well. However, you know, pre orders definitely a great way to build buzz and to start be able to start marketing your book early. So those are the four questions that authors should ask when planning a book launch. Make sure to listen next week as I about the seven different book launch events that you can consider when you're planning your book launch. Again, this is Shelly hitz from authoraudience.com helping you reach more people with your message. Lights, Camera, Action. It's time for this week's Take Action tip. I want you to sit down right now and write out your goal for your book launch. Like I mentioned earlier, it's so important to know what is your primary goal. So write that down. Now if you didn't do it earlier and is that goal your best seller status, book sales, or growing your email list? Or do you have another main goal? Do you want to increase the clients for the services you offer? Maybe there's something else that you have as your primary goal write that down right now so that you know what what that goal is. As you're planning your book launch.

Make sure to get all the show notes and resources from today's episode, including the free excerpt of Indie Author Book Marketing Success, which shows you exactly how to set up a pre order using Amazon Advantage. Get all of that@authoraudience.com 7 that's the number 7 authoraudience.com 7.

Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly Gain segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. Because in the end.

If we only think about books and sales, it's just such an empty feeling. There's so much more to this life, and that's what this segment is all about. This week's verse comes from Proverbs and it's Proverbs 16:9 says we can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. So as a Christian, I strongly urge you to be praying as you're planning your book launch. Ask God for wisdom, because we can make our plans, but ultimately the Lord determines our steps and he can give us wisdom that we don't even know. And sometimes the things he asks us to do or he prompts us to do doesn't make sense, but it's what will be most successful. Just like the example I shared earlier with my 21 days of gratitude Challenge launch. It didn't make sense to only do one week, but that was what was most successful. It's what I felt God was leading me to do. And so I highly recommend that you seek him, you pray and you plan. It's always good to plan and to have that strategy in place, as well as praying and seeking God's wisdom.

It's my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine the light of Christ through your life and reach more people with your message, whether that be in your books, in your social media marketing, in your products, and more. I am so excited for you. Let me know if you're planning a book launch and what you're doing. Connect with me on Facebook, facebook.com.

Authoraudience and if you're interested in really learning how to sell more books, make sure to get my training on 27 Ways to Sell More Books at authoraudience.com sell that's authoraudience.com sell. Don't miss next week's episode, which is all about seven different book launch events you can plan to help build buzz and sell more books. I'LL see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.